There was something of Alice in Wonderland about Carrie in Murderland (ITV1), a psychological chiller by David Pirie. Carrie (Bel Powley) finds her mother murdered, spilled on the kitchen floor like ketchup in a sexy, scarlet, sequinned dress. Fifteen years later, unable to rest until she solves the murder, she walks away from her own wedding, abandoning her wedding dress, a virginal shift, like a pool of milk. It feels like a dream.

Wide-eyed Carrie (a quite extraordinary performance if, perhaps, better-spoken than you might expect from a child on a sink estate) is inquisitive, persistent and eager to help DI Hain (Robbie Coltrane) catch the killer. Very much like Alice who, finding herself in a hole, tries to make sense of it all by closely interrogating every creature she meets, most of them mad and at least one of them murderous.

The night of her mother's murder is an exercise in tension. Everything seems ominous to her. The man trying to take her photograph, the drunk at the bus stop, a strange pair of trainers she sees on the stair, the glimpses of sado-masochist behaviour, drink and drugs. Only dishevelled DI Hain feels friendly and somehow familiar in this frightening world. Her mother's funeral is bleak to the point of comedy, with prostitutes on one side and police on the other, until Hain arrives radiating human warmth like a storage heater.

But even his own colleagues – particularly his own colleagues – do not like him. As Carrie squirrels among press cuttings and clues, they coalesce into a sudden revelation and an accusation: "You knew her! It was you!"

Each episode will show the same events from different perspectives. This week, the child. Next, the detective. Finally, the murdered woman.

Life (BBC1) told a tale so grisly that a horror writer would punch a frustrated hole in his computer screen and take up pumpkin-farming instead. This was the first televised Komodo dragon hunt. Dragons have been hunting like this for thousands of years but no one has filmed it before.

It was the dry season and a water buffalo with horns like a sickle moon was resting in a muddy pool. The camera crew waited day after day and so did the dragons. The buffalo ignored them both until one dragon snapped at its ankle, the water reddened and the buffalo lumbered away. Now all the dragons, nine-foot somnolent monsters with slavering jaws, seemed to come alive. A dragon's bite is venomous and they knew the wound would not heal. They stalked the buffalo for three weeks until it was on its knees. One dragon touched its face with a forked tongue as if tasting the meal. The buffalo swung its heavy head away and the whole gang closed in. When the camera crew came back in the morning, the buffalo was dead and 10 dragons were tearing it to pieces.

As David Attenborough said, with some bite, "We don't need tales of Jurassic Park. It's all here."

The effect of this prolonged torture on the young researcher was unusual. He said: "I'm sure they are starting to think of the camera team as death. We're always there when the dragons are there. We've seen [the buffalo] every morning and we've seen him every evening and you build up a relationship with him. I'm not really that sure how cut out I am for this. If the game is spending all your time watching an animal die . . . I dunno about that."

The only natural-history cameraman I ever saw interfere with nature, rescuing a baby penguin which had fallen into a crevasse, was a woman. I draw no conclusions from this.

Last night in Coronation Street (ITV1), Carla (the one with the treacle black hair and the splendidly null expression) flew back from LA on her broomstick and confronted Tony at Liam's graveside. Perhaps, at this point, I should clarify matters for late arrivals at the cemetery. Tony, who murdered Liam, is going to marry his widow and adopt his baby. Gothic or what! Carla, who was married to Tony but really loved Liam (do try and keep up at the back) is about to chuck a brick through Tony's rosy idyll and wrest control of the appropriately named Underworld from him. It all sounds like jolly juicy viewing for Hallowe'en.